Narrative disorder
Apr. 2nd, 2021 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12It's cold, it's grey, and I've spent most of the day curled up in bed, watching the birds swooping from branch to branch in the trees outside the window, and reading the third of Barbara Hambly's James Asher series of vampire/historical mystery novels. All in all, a good start to the holiday, although I wish I had more energy.
It's the second day of the new thirty-day book meme that I'm doing this month:
2. A book that was an interesting failure
I really struggled to come up with an answer for this. Generally, when I've found a book to be a 'failure,' it's held little interest for me. Every so often I'll read a book that I can admit succeeds at what it's trying to do — just failed to work for me, due to my own interests or tastes. But that's not really what is meant by today's prompt.
Eventually, after much thought, I landed on an answer: Malka Older's Centenal Cycle. I would not go so far as to describe it as a 'failure', although I feel that its excellent first book, Infomocracy, is undermined by the two books in the series that follow. This trilogy is a near-future, speculative fiction political thriller. Its worldbuilding hinges on the premise that at some point, the world as it exists right now — with countries with different systems of political organisation defined by geographic borders, and citizens of said countries being bound by accidents of birth to live under whatever regime happens to control the nation in which they're born (unless they are able to emigrate) — overturns all that and comes up with a new way to do democracy.
The replacement is a system in which the entire world is divided up into groups of 100,000. Due to population patterns, such a group might cover a huge rural region, or it might instead be a single block of a densely populated city. Every ten years, the entire world votes for whichever of the myriad political parties seeks to run it, and whichever party ends up with a majority of these 100,000-person units sets the political agenda for the next ten years. However, this ruling power has no authority over 100,000-person districts that it did not win in the election, and there is complete unrestricted freedom of movement, so if your chosen party loses your district, you can move anywhere in the world to a district it does control. It's basically a system where people allign themselves on the basis of shared values, rather than accidents of birth or geography — people in metro Manila, a sleepy Austrian skiing village, and a seaside town in North Wales may end up sharing a government, and may feel more of a sense of common ground than they do with people living just around the corner.
So far, so good. There are some obvious holes in this worldbuilding (if two contiguous city blocks are ruled by two different governments, who is responsible for the plumbing? or collecting the rubbish?), but it's a cool premise and the perfect setting for a global mystery that is part nerdy political wonkery, part neon-drenched cyberpunk thriller.
Sadly, however, I feel the series goes off the rails in the later books, mainly due to Older wanting to pack the books with all her own real-world interests and day-job experiences (she's been an aid worker, she was heavily involved in dealing with the Fukushima earthquake in 2011, and she's now an academic researcher of politics). These things are all really interesting, and I've seen her talk about them on panels and write nonfiction about them — all of which I found really engaging. They just feel oddly shoehorned into her fiction. The biggest flaw, in my opinion, was her decision to basically retcon her own worldbuilding and decide that not all of the world participated in the global 100,000-person district democratic system. It makes the narrative go in weird directions, and weakens the later books.
In any case, that's my answer to today's question, although I'm not sure I'd describe the books as a 'failure'.
3. A book where you really wanted to be reading the "shadow" version of the book (as in, there are traces of a different book in the work and you would have much preferred to read that one)
4. A book with a worldbuilding detail that has stuck with you
5. A book where you loved the premise but the execution left you cold
6. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work
7. The most imaginative book you've seen lately
8. A book that feels like it was written just for you
9. A book that reminds you of someone
10. A book that belongs to a specific time in your mind, caught in amber
11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time
12. A book that came to you at the wrong time
13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that
14. A book balanced on a knife edge
15. A snuffed candle of a book
16. The one you'd take with you while you were being ferried on dark underground rivers
17. The one that taught you something about yourself
18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion
19. A book that started a pilgrimage
20. A frigid ice bath of a book
21. A book written into your psyche
22. A warm blanket of a book
23. A book that made you bleed
24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book that led you home
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
It's the second day of the new thirty-day book meme that I'm doing this month:
2. A book that was an interesting failure
I really struggled to come up with an answer for this. Generally, when I've found a book to be a 'failure,' it's held little interest for me. Every so often I'll read a book that I can admit succeeds at what it's trying to do — just failed to work for me, due to my own interests or tastes. But that's not really what is meant by today's prompt.
Eventually, after much thought, I landed on an answer: Malka Older's Centenal Cycle. I would not go so far as to describe it as a 'failure', although I feel that its excellent first book, Infomocracy, is undermined by the two books in the series that follow. This trilogy is a near-future, speculative fiction political thriller. Its worldbuilding hinges on the premise that at some point, the world as it exists right now — with countries with different systems of political organisation defined by geographic borders, and citizens of said countries being bound by accidents of birth to live under whatever regime happens to control the nation in which they're born (unless they are able to emigrate) — overturns all that and comes up with a new way to do democracy.
The replacement is a system in which the entire world is divided up into groups of 100,000. Due to population patterns, such a group might cover a huge rural region, or it might instead be a single block of a densely populated city. Every ten years, the entire world votes for whichever of the myriad political parties seeks to run it, and whichever party ends up with a majority of these 100,000-person units sets the political agenda for the next ten years. However, this ruling power has no authority over 100,000-person districts that it did not win in the election, and there is complete unrestricted freedom of movement, so if your chosen party loses your district, you can move anywhere in the world to a district it does control. It's basically a system where people allign themselves on the basis of shared values, rather than accidents of birth or geography — people in metro Manila, a sleepy Austrian skiing village, and a seaside town in North Wales may end up sharing a government, and may feel more of a sense of common ground than they do with people living just around the corner.
So far, so good. There are some obvious holes in this worldbuilding (if two contiguous city blocks are ruled by two different governments, who is responsible for the plumbing? or collecting the rubbish?), but it's a cool premise and the perfect setting for a global mystery that is part nerdy political wonkery, part neon-drenched cyberpunk thriller.
Sadly, however, I feel the series goes off the rails in the later books, mainly due to Older wanting to pack the books with all her own real-world interests and day-job experiences (she's been an aid worker, she was heavily involved in dealing with the Fukushima earthquake in 2011, and she's now an academic researcher of politics). These things are all really interesting, and I've seen her talk about them on panels and write nonfiction about them — all of which I found really engaging. They just feel oddly shoehorned into her fiction. The biggest flaw, in my opinion, was her decision to basically retcon her own worldbuilding and decide that not all of the world participated in the global 100,000-person district democratic system. It makes the narrative go in weird directions, and weakens the later books.
In any case, that's my answer to today's question, although I'm not sure I'd describe the books as a 'failure'.
3. A book where you really wanted to be reading the "shadow" version of the book (as in, there are traces of a different book in the work and you would have much preferred to read that one)
4. A book with a worldbuilding detail that has stuck with you
5. A book where you loved the premise but the execution left you cold
6. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work
7. The most imaginative book you've seen lately
8. A book that feels like it was written just for you
9. A book that reminds you of someone
10. A book that belongs to a specific time in your mind, caught in amber
11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time
12. A book that came to you at the wrong time
13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that
14. A book balanced on a knife edge
15. A snuffed candle of a book
16. The one you'd take with you while you were being ferried on dark underground rivers
17. The one that taught you something about yourself
18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion
19. A book that started a pilgrimage
20. A frigid ice bath of a book
21. A book written into your psyche
22. A warm blanket of a book
23. A book that made you bleed
24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book that led you home
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 06:50 pm (UTC)But this means the districts no longer comprise 100 000 people...are the districts somehow redrawn when birth/death/immigration/emigration happens? If not, they would probably change size a lot with time.
I started the first book, but didn't get that far--it just didn't grip me.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-03 12:13 pm (UTC)I did read the whole series, but I liked it less and less as the books went on.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 09:57 pm (UTC)I think Malka Older is a great academic writer, when she's writing straight political science with a dash of verve and adventure. When she's trying to do the inverse, it's just not quite… there.
Also I thought the gender politics were kind of weird, lol.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-03 12:17 pm (UTC)But I felt the series' quality diminished as it went on, and the prose was never more than servicable. AS you say, Older's academic writing is a lot better (and I've seen her talk in person on panels about speculative politics and worldbuilding, and she's great at that too).